Will McDermott - The Moons of Mirrodin

“Out there,” said Slobad. He pointed past Glissa. “Pulling to Lumengrid, huh? Just start pulling again like nothing happen, huh?”

Glissa looked out the front of the diver. She could see the severed ends of the ropes hanging over the sea floor, right above Bosh’s muck-covered feet, which continued to trudge through the sea.

“Any sign of eels or other monsters?” asked Glissa.

Slobad shook his head.

“We are near Lumengrid,” said Bruenna. “I feel it.”

Glissa nodded. There was nothing to do now but wait. She sat and thought about the flare she had experienced while she was … dead. It had been so intense, so real. She had seen things she’d never seen before. Had the serum opened up her mind to a different time and place? Or was it just a hallucination caused by flirting with death? With Chunth dead, her only chance to find out the truth was the Pool of Knowledge, and now she had no serum to activate it.

Her musings were cut short by a loud clang from ahead of them. Glissa looked around to see what happened, and was worried when she saw the ropes floating down to the bottom of the sea. But then she noticed the golem’s feet trudging back toward the diver. The feet banged into the side of the invisible diver, then climbed the side, leaving muddy smears behind. The elf heard Bosh’s voice boom from above her. He must have climbed up the iron tube and stuck his head through the opening.

“I am glad you have recovered, Glissa,” said the golem’s disembodied voice.

“Thank you, Bosh,” said Glissa. “I owe you my life.”

“As I owe you. I believe we have arrived. I have struck a metal wall. How shall I proceed, Bruenna?”

“Pull us around the base,” said Bruenna. “You will see a tube. Take us in there.”

“How will he be able to see the tube?” asked Glissa.

“Good question,” said the human mage. “I haven’t worked out all the problems with the diver yet.”

The two women looked at each other blankly.

“Why not use air bubble, huh?” said Slobad finally. “Like before. Saw metal monster past golem.”

Glissa nodded. “Good idea, Slobad.” She turned to Bruenna. “Can you control the size of the invisibility bubble?”

Bruenna moved her hands through their spell dance. “How much control are you talking about?”

“Collapse the invisibility bubble to just around the diver and extend the air bubble out past Bosh’s ropes. Then we can see him and he can see the fortress wall.”

“I can do that. I do not know how long I will be able to hold it, though.”

“Just do your best.”

Glissa watched as Bruenna muttered a few words and changed the pattern that her hands followed. The quicksilver rushed toward them for a moment, and Glissa gasped, then the air pressure dropped and the quicksilver washed away from them past the ends of the ropes. A silver wall appeared in the bubble, extending out past the edges and down into the mud.

Glissa heard Bosh climb off the diver then saw him appear in front of the transparent wall of the diver. He picked up the ropes and began moving around the edge of Lumengrid. Glissa watched the walls slip past them. She was amazed at the size of the place. She could only see a small part of the vedalken fortress at the edge of the bubble, but it seemed to go on forever.

She looked back at Bruenna. Bruenna’s hands were a blur. Her face had turned red and sweat dripped off her chin. Finally Glissa saw the tube Bruenna had mentioned. It was enormous. Only the bottom of the tube was visible within the air bubble. It curved up at the edges and disappeared into the silver curtain around them.

Bosh pulled them into the tube. After a short time, Glissa could feel the diver rising. She fell backward as Bosh pulled them up a ramp. Eventually they leveled out again, and the tube they were in began to get smaller. She could see the sides of the tube rise up around the diver until they met at the top, just above Bosh’s head.

Bruenna said, “Stop. We must stop here.”

Glissa turned and banged on the walls of the diver, wrenching a finger as she misjudged the distance between the two invisible objects. Bosh looked back and Glissa waved her hands, but then she realized he couldn’t see them. She grabbed her sword sheath and pointed at the top of the diver. Bosh dropped the ropes and walked back toward the diver, but he couldn’t fit between the top of the tube and the diver. Glissa looked back at Bruenna.

“What now?” she asked.

Bruenna pointed at a panel in the top of the tube, above Bosh. “We must go through there.”

Glissa waved her sheath at Bosh and pointed it up at the panel. The golem nodded his head. He grabbed the ropes and pulled the diver forward. The panel disappeared as the diver moved under it. Bruenna collapsed the invisibility sphere. The diver reappeared around Glissa. She moved to the center and looked up.

The panel came into view above the opening, and the diver stopped. Bruenna said a few words, and the diver rose up toward the panel. Glissa picked up Slobad and set him on her shoulders. The goblin pulled a tool from his satchel and began working on the panel. After some grunting, Glissa heard metal scrape against metal. Light spilled into the diver through a hole above Slobad.

“Help me out, huh?” called Slobad.

Glissa pushed Slobad through the opening and turned to Bruenna. “You next,” she said.

Bruenna walked over to Glissa. She continued to move her arms through their intricate pattern as Glissa grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her through the opening. Slobad leaned down and grabbed her by the shoulders as Glissa pushed from below. With Bruenna safe above, Glissa grabbed her cloak, which she had dropped before the eel attack, and clambered through. Once above, she tossed the cloak aside, leaned back down, and knocked on the diver again. Bosh pushed it back away from the tube opening, then climbed through the hole.

They were inside Lumengrid.

* * * * *

Glissa looked around, worried someone might have spotted them crawling up through the floor, but they had come into the corner of some sort of storage area. Nobody was around. They were surrounded by silver crates. The crates and the walls were made from the same silver material as the towers. Glissa guessed the vedalken had found some way to turn quicksilver into a more durable material. It was the only metal they seemed to have access to. She opened one of the crates. It was filled with empty serum vials.

Bosh moved a stack of crates out of the way, and Glissa immediately pulled out her sword. Three constructs stood against the wall. They were similar to the ones that had attacked the cultists. Glissa advanced on them, then noticed one of construct was missing an arm, while another was headless. She examined the constructs. All three were covered in dust.

When she turned around, the elf gasped. The rest of the room was enormous, larger than Bruenna’s entire house. Crates littered the floor around her, and a thick coat of dust covered everything. The center of the room was dominated by a large mechanism. Glissa walked over to it. The machine ran almost the entire length of the room and was packed tightly with intricate parts.

“What is this place?”

“It is an old serum processing room,” said Bruenna. She walked over to the machine, reached out her hand toward it, but then pulled away. “Father worked down here in his youth. He kept this processor running.” Bruenna wiped her eyes. “He even made some improvements to the system. That is how he got noticed. Soon after, he began working with the top vedalken researcher.”

Glissa stared at Bruenna. The human mage had been quiet since they entered the room. Now Glissa knew why. The place was full of ghosts for her, full of memories.